


there’s a little girl in the forest

by schrodingers__cat



Series: and the forest entwines their once-souls [1]
Category: A Hat in Time (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Speculation, from the minions’ perspective!, hat kid is too good for all of us, pretty angsty, turned up the spooky for subcon quite a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:42:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23127991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schrodingers__cat/pseuds/schrodingers__cat
Summary: But now there’s a little girl in the forest, and she’s going to live. No one asks her name, and she doesn’t give it out. She seems to prefer the anonymity anyway, and it’s not like she asked any of their names either.(As if they had them. As if anything in this forest, living or dead, could have a name. Onlyshehad the audacity.)
Relationships: Hat Kid & Snatcher (A Hat in Time), Hat Kid & Snatcher's Minions (A Hat in Time), Snatcher & Snatcher's Minions (A Hat in Time)
Series: and the forest entwines their once-souls [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666564
Comments: 29
Kudos: 204





	there’s a little girl in the forest

There’s a little girl in the forest. 

The little black-cloaked phantom with a fire-blank face giggles as it leads her to one of its Boss’ traps. They all love this part.

Boss appears from the lengthy shadow of a tree, winks, and waits for the girl to fall. 

Boss is gonna let this one live, they all know that. Their last living servant had been an old man, crotchety and inefficient. He had come to live in the forest because he was tired of taking care of his grandchildren, and apparently hadn’t gotten the memo about the _everything_ in Subcon. 

He had to have been... half-blind with cataracts, or something. Kept calling Boss a “big dang snake,” which significantly lowered his already-abysmal survival prospects. They kept him doing mail for a good long while, though. 

He was dead now. None of them got too choked up about it. 

But now there’s a little girl in the forest, and she’s going to live. No one asks her name, and she doesn’t give it out. She seems to prefer the anonymity anyway, and it’s not like she asked any of their names either. 

(As if they had them. As if anything in this forest, living or dead, could have a name. Only _she_ had the audacity.)

Her bright top hat and cape look out of place here. (How long will she stay so bright? Things of light and brilliance can’t survive here. Not for long.) 

She looks horrified at her first job— _Murder the spirits._

Boss definitely could’ve phrased that better, but eh. 

When the spirits encourage her to feed their flame, she loses her hesitance and gladly tosses paintings into the fire. 

So she’s different than the others, then. Adaptable. This one might have a chance. 

No one is quite sure what to do with that. 

—————

The next time she skips into the village, there’s a mask on her face. Everyone needs a double take to recognize her with it on, and they almost speak to her like she’s one of them, or pass by her as indifferently as they would a Dweller. 

It’s an odd thing, to see a living girl with that mask on. 

(It reminds them of something long, long gone, and long forgotten.)

An eternity ago—the Children’s Kingdom, that’s what others would call their forest, lovely and green. Abandoned, lost, or just plain scared—children found refuge in Subcon. A kingdom of children, ruled by children. 

_She_ wasn’t even grown when her mother died, when _she_ was crowned Queen of East Subcon. The King and Queen of West Subcon were lovely, but... well... incompetent, and their son had really been doing all the work since he could comprehend the necessary documents. 

The masks had been an ancient tradition, from back when children needed to hide their identities to be safe. 

A refuge for the lost. That’s what their forest used to be. 

_Ha!_

How ironic. 

—————

They watch the little girl drowning. She falls from a wooden platform and the dripping hands of the swamp reach for her, clawing at her arms, her hair. They don’t do anything. They don’t feel much relief when she makes back onto a platform. She doesn’t speak to any of them, shaking, hands pressed to her mouth in horror. 

And one of them thinks—they weren’t always this cruel. 

But there’s something in all of them that was lost—something vital, frozen under layers and layers of unimaginably, horribly cold ice _numbing their limbs and burning their skin and they can’t move, they can’t breathe, they could never breathe they can feel their heartbeats slowing and their lungs suffocating—_

But that’s not important. 

What’s important is that she clears up the well, and now that there’s running water again, there should be so much less ice. 

—————

She’s still wearing the mask.

She goes to tear apart the weird possessed toilet in Boss’ lab. He’s been grumpy about that one for a while—the “possession” aspect of the outhouse means that the thing can actually hurt him. He hasn’t been able to go near it for a week, and most of his chemical experiments are ruined. 

(A few of them made Boss a baking soda volcano, to try and make it a bit better. He’d sorta stood there frozen—heh. Definitely having another existential crisis. After a good few minutes, they all just... left him there. They laughed about that one for weeks.)

The little girl seems... well... disgusted, but excepting that, mostly unbothered by the ghastly lavatory—which is honestly pretty impressive. 

Thought that might be because it’s her soul haunting it, after all. 

—————

They get a warning for the kid’s next contract, written in flowing, familiar script. 

_She’s going in_ there. _Be careful, and stay alert. I don’t want what little blood you all have left on my hands._

The unfortunate one who was sent to remind the little girl about the hat thing (No magic in _her_ territory, ever. It was like a beacon to _her_ ) came back to the village trembling. 

(That one got extra mail for a good month afterwards. No one dared to say anything out loud, but they all pitched in.) 

The forest is eerily still, that day. Subcon is always frightening—they make an effort to keep it that way—but while the girl is in _her_ manor, every living and dead thing holds its breath. The air has a horrible, heavy, _frozen_ silence, and the trees make clawed shadows on the forest floor. The fire spirits are dim and hushed. 

Everyone just tries not to think. 

(There’s a vicious thing underneath the forest floor, intertwined with the roots and permafrost, far beneath the grasses and stones and clawing, drowning sludge. It cannot grip them all in their sleep, so it takes hold of their hearts and their once-souls, keeps them more dead than they are alive, and colder than they are warm.) 

_Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t—_

Boss can’t help but think. They know this, just as the forest does. Boss is intelligent and clever, and (he collected books like he was hoarding for the apocalypse, he memorized the names of all the stars, he could calculate exponential costs in his head) he was always thinking. 

They want to go. They want to go to him (brother, leader, ruler) but they can’t _move_. All they can feel is the ice in their limbs and their lungs and _they can’t move_. 

And then the girl leaves the manor. 

For a second, the girl is superimposed with something else. In their minds she is a child wearing a mask, she is shaking and she is cold and she is horribly, awfully afraid, and she is familiar. But her eyes are not dimmed, nor do they glow brilliant yellow. Her skin is not transparent-violet-blue-green-red. She is neither ice nor spirit—

But she walks like one. She leaves _her_ manor like an exile. No one has the energy to jeer at her as she walks by, and she seems... unsettled, by their ever-cold stares. 

(They were children. They were children, _they were children,_ they were three and five and eight and ten and they had run away from home or been abandoned on doorsteps, and in _her_ terrible, reasonless fury _she_ had—)

The little girl stares for a while. She slowly pulls off her mask, and that resemblance to the dead fades.

She goes. 

Subcon breathes again. 

—————

Boss is plotting. 

They can all tell, because he hasn’t left his tree in a good few days. The little girl with the hat also hasn’t been back in a while—

They all saw Boss’ face, after she was gone. And if they still had faces, theirs would have mirrored his own. 

_(How could we, how could we, even we don’t dare go near.)_

A minuscule thread of the forest went with the little girl, when she left. Its roots are taking hold of her, as they take everything that wanders within. 

Boss doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that thread, because it ties her to him, just as it tethers her to Subcon. 

(There’s a lullaby hidden away somewhere in the woods. The trees remember, because they remember everything. The ruins remember, because they heard it. But _she_ lost it in her fury, and the cold took away any songs that remained with the once-children. Darkness and long days under lonely, lonely frozen stone stole them from him.)

He slaps a badge onto her little winged visor and dumps packages onto the back of the scooter. 

Haha, yes! Mail day! 

(It’s the first time they’ve seen her smile.)

—————

Boss is plotting. 

The forest has become erratic. It mirrors him, when he’s like this. The wildfire burns brighter, the old stone ruins shift just slightly, the swampy waters bubble and reach out for victims that aren’t there. 

The fallen Time Pieces glitter with potential. 

(A forest without ice. A refuge for the lost.) 

Boss goes to the little girl in the laboratory. Reluctantly. (He’s already planning to hold back, but they know him. They know his desperation—they feel it too.) 

They all follow. 

—————

She is a bright, brilliant little thing. They’re not sure how they didn’t realize. 

She’s almost too bright. Their eyes have long adjusted to the darkness, learned to thrive in it. The little girl is almost too much for them.

She hasn’t stopped coming back. 

She bothers Boss in his tree. She pokes him with her umbrella and waves her last little trick in his face, and when he finally shouts back in not-quite-annoyance she only giggles. 

She asks them all incessant questions. She asks about the trees, how they never seem to be quite where they should be. _(That’s just Subcon for ya.)_ She asks about the wildfire, why it’s there, just burning. _(It’s warm.)_ She asks about the stars, and without realizing it they send her to Boss. 

They swap out her mask for another one, one that’s more threatening in its visage. _(So_ she’ll _know better than to hurt you.)_ She grins and twirls, showing it off. They applaud. _(So_ we _don’t ever hurt you.)_

She doesn’t ask about the ice. She doesn’t ask about the lonely song in the old ruins, or the torn-out pages, or the way they all shiver when an eastern wind blows. 

She takes the hands of one of them, and spins it around, wild and almost-carefree. They all can’t help but laugh. 

—————

When she goes, it is dark again. 

They jeer and cackle at stray wanderers. They set clever traps. They try their hardest to breathe.

They become Subcon once more. Lost little spirits, always so very cold. They’re used to the dark. They hate the cold. 

They do not have faces or names, and nor do they want them. 

Neither do they want the crayon drawings that are pinned against the trees. Neither do they want the great big leaf pile in the center of the village, perfect for jumping. Neither to they want the scattered bits of yarn, the forgotten knitting needles. Neither do they want the echoes, echoes, _echoes._

The permafrost in the forest’s core grips its hold tighter. Subcon rebels, its roots entwining themselves around its ruined structures and its ruined children. 

An eastern wind blows. 

Poor, cold, ever-frozen home of the lost. 

**Author's Note:**

> (spooky scary skeletons plays very faintly in the distance)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Choices Made in Time and Times](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23977177) by [Writing_Frenzy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writing_Frenzy/pseuds/Writing_Frenzy)




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